www.wmfd.com - Kids with cancer face special
problems, so in addition to
dealing with a serious disease,
they have to worry about the
scary aspects of treatment, and
11-year-old Kylie Simonds used
her own experiences with cancer
to help kids like her.
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Kylie Simonds Invents TV Backpack To Help Kids With Cancer

Kids with cancer face special problems. In addition to dealing with a serious disease, they have to worry about the scary aspects of treatment. Eleven-year-old Kylie Simonds used her own experiences with cancer to help kids like her. Kylie is now trying to raise money to have her I-V backpack manufactured. On a day like today, Kylie Simonds is outside with sister Savanna, brother Mikey, and mom Kelly, enjoying the warm days of summer. Three years ago, Kylie was diagnosed with rhabdpmyosarcoma. a soft tissue cancer. "I lost my hair and always used to get sick easily," Kylie says. A positive prognosis from her doctors now has Kylie focused on something else, designed to benefit children with cancer. "I used to have to use the I-V poles, and I always tripped over all the wires, and it was hard to walk around, and I always had to have someone push it for me, because I was kinda weak when I was in chemo," Kylie says. So she came up with this idea. "They're very light, and they're more convenient," Kylie says. It's a pediatric I-V backpack. "To have something small like, and not as big, like when I first went into the office, I was like, 'Whoa, those things are huge and scary!'" Kylie says. This is the prototype, which won a number of awards at the recent Connecticut Invention Convention. "The bag would have all the medicine that you needed for chemotherapy, and this would be the drip and it would go through the machine on the front, and you just put it on and you can walk around with it," Kylie says. The young inventor went home with the patent prize, and now has a provisional patent for the cool and comfy necessity. "I've sat back with it a lot and it doesn't hurt," Kylie says. Kylie had good friends in mind when she created it. "My friend Marik, he has a prosthetic leg, and he has crutches, and he always has to have someone push it for him, but if he had something like that he could just slip it on," Kylie says. For Brooke... "Well, she had to sometimes go home with it and she had to stay overnight in the hospitals, so I think she would have really liked something like this," Kylie says. Cancer-free for two years now, play time is any time.

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